When Finn Wolfhard's Trevor Spengler tells his mom about some potentially ghostly strangeness taking place in their inherited firehouse, Carrie Coon's Callie spends their entire conversation absentmindedly scrolling. That's Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire: Not worth the energy it would take to lift your eyes from your phone.

Most people, I think, would agree that box-office returns aren't necessarily an indicator of quality. But it was still a bit disheartening to discover that of the five movies I caught over the weekend, the two I most enjoyed were the titles most likely to leave the area when the new Ghostbusters gobbles up screens this upcoming Friday.

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Going to the cineplex or staying in and streaming this weekend? Every Thursday morning at 8:15 a.m. you can listen to Mike Schulz dish on recent movie releases & talk smack about Hollywood celebs on Planet 93.9 FM with the fabulous Dave & Darren in the Morning team of Dave Levora and Darren Pitra. The morning crew previews upcoming releases, too.

Or you can check the Reader Web site and listen to their latest conversation by the warm glow of your electronic device. Never miss a pithy comment from these three scintillating pundits again.

Thursday, March 28: Discussion of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, Road House, Shirley, Immaculate, and Late Night with the Devil, and previews of Asphalt City, In the Land of Saints & Sinners, and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. Lots to chew on here; it's practically a double-length segment. And in the discussion of the '89 Road House, please forgive the mistaking of character-actor legend Ben Gazzara for character-actor legend Robert Loggia. The Dave & Darren Show regrets the error.

Now playing at area theaters.

Ryan Gosling didn't win an Academy Award last night. But Ryan Gosling totally won the Academy Awards last night.

Almost no one, in retrospect, likes a misleading trailer, and I don't know anyone who enjoys a trailer that seems to give away a narrative's contents from points A to Z, making you feel like you've seen the movie months before you actually see it. (Ordinary Angels, anyone?) Yet I reserve a special kind of irritation for trailers that wind up almost exhaustively descriptive of the eventual experience simply through the predecessors they choose to plug.

Winner of seven New Zealand Film & Television Awards including Best Film, Director, and Screenplay, and a work whose 2010 release made it the highest grossing New Zealand film to date, writer/director Taiki Waititi's Boy enjoys a March 21 Figge Art Museum screening in the venue's Free Film at the Figge series, its critical consensus at Rotten Tomatoes stating that the movie "possesses the offbeat charm associated with New Zealand film but is also fully capable of drawing the viewer in emotionally."

The reasons that even Herbert virgins might want to consider showing up for Dune: Part Two lie less with the tale's specifics than the sorts of massive pleasures that only works of this magnitude provide.

Can a sweep year at the Oscars also be a spread-the-wealth year at the Oscars?

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